I live without fridge for about 2 years now. For me there is no necessity in cooling my food because I get to stores nearly daily at work where I can buy fresh food instead of piling it into a device that slows down the rotting process. Just wanted to make clear that you can eat food even without fridge

So I buy milk after work. The next morning when I need it, it's warm and, depending on the season, already spoiled. If it's not already spoiled, it will be the following day (if I'm not consuming one liter/day).Sometimes jam spoils despite being in the fridge because we aren't eating it fast enough.

So what I'm wondering is if you are throwing away lots of food? Despite that it's wasteful it may be cheaper in the long run to have a fridge...

Disclaimer: I have no idea how you live or what food you buy so it's solely based on my own consumption and may not apply in the least to how you manage your eating/shopping.

So I buy milk after work. The next morning when I need it, it's warm and, depending on the season, already spoiled. If it's not already spoiled, it will be the following day (if I'm not consuming one liter/day).

stand your closed carton in the sink and fill with cold water simples.

Or better yet get a clay pot with a lid and another clay tub just a bit bigger and 3 marbles. Stand the pot in the tub on top of the marbles and fill the gap with cold water. Small pot stays cold water gets warm. Change the water as required. This is how you do refrigeration without gas or electricity. Flower pots work well for this.

My milk consumption realy sank over the time, but back than when I lived with my parents I always drank the whole bottle/package of milk at once because I hated the taste afterwards even if the milk was in the fridge the whole time.

sure there are foods that spoil fast but there are some that hold longer. like eggs hold for days even when its warm. I also always got rice and tortelini at home if I want something quick and got no time today to go to a store.

I never throw food away, that is a sin for me. The only thing I do is throw stuff like peels (if I ever peel something) or cut off ends and skins and shells in the garden and let it rot there. I also use no trash can, I just carry my trash out on the way to work the next morning.

My food schedule is like this, I wake up, grab a piece of fruit and go to work, I eat that piece of fruit when I arrive at work.I got 1 hour lunchbreak, I dont want that long of a lunchbreak, I would want to work that one hour through and go home one hour earlier but thats austiran law (F**K Austrian law). So I got one hour to spent, and thats a nice coincidence that it gives me enough time to go to the store near work and buy something for lunch and for dinner. Usually I just buy some breads for lunch and for dinner it depends, but most is simple and small stuff since I live alone and theres no use in cooking anything too fancy or large if I am the only one eating it. At home I cook, today I had scrambled eggs with onions, tomato, garlic, sheep cheese and pepper. Nothing left over, nothing wasted, just the onion peels in the garden.

When I cook something bigger I eat the leftovers the next day and thats it. I rarely saw anything that isnt spoiled after 2 days even in the fridge, but everything cooked is usually still good the next day, even if not cooled down. I ate chili con carne for 3 (the day I cooked it, the next day and than the next day) days last summer and it wasnt spoiled at all.

since I got no fridge I dont have any foods that I "keep for later" so I dont throw away anything.I rather saw quite the opposite, that people who use a fridge frow away more food. like my parents, the fridge is always stacked full and always you find some last slice of cheese that turned completly dry, some moulded saussage or food from 5 years ago (I am serious, I found once a package of milk that hit the date of consumption 5 years ago). And its not just my parents but its either I see that extreme or the other extreme that people got a fridge and freezer, but nothing inside it, which is a even worse waste of energy.

I prefer local foods, I prefer to buy my food daily so I get fresh food and I waste no food at all.I can understand why people want to have a filled fridge so they dont need to go to a store in their free time, but I do it during work so I see no problem in there (sure I could spend these 20 minutes I walk to the store with reading a book but I also enjoy walking and its a realy nice change from sitting the whole day).

Also just because I mentioned freezers, I could never use one. Sure if I would have people living with me I would probably turn on the fridge (I got one because my parents bought it but I unplugged it). But freezers are just so dumb, why do people buy food to eat it a year later? I could imagine it if some crysis suddenly falls upon us, but I think if a crysis comes that is so bad that we cant buy food anymore, than it would probably effect freezers too. I saw people hording mountains of meat that they WILL NEVER EVER EAT IN THEIR LIVE for the sake of having it. When I ask them they say "oh its so much cheaper that meat was -25% I needed to buy it". So their logic is to buy meat that is nearly spoiled to save 25%, than run a device to prevent it from spoiling which decreases the quality of the food even more and than let that device run for years before they finally maybe eat it, which generates an energy consumption far beyond the money they saved by buying half spoiled meat 5 years ago.

I got kind of long there again, anyway, it is easily possible to live without fridge, I can imagine that it could be even easier with more people in the house because you can cook larger servings than and it all gets eaten up at once.

In the ER with a urinary catheter due to a blood clot in the bladder. Side effect of Urologist procedure to relive BPH (look it up). All you guys, this is what you have to look forward to. Should be going home soon. But OMFG that was painful!!!!!!!

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@Slaykomimi thanks for the long answer! One word to freezers: Ice cream (Well, in English it's too words, but you know what I mean. )

@JMack Ugh! The last (and first?) time I had an urinary catheter was after I broke my foot in 2005 and needed an operation to put some wire in my foot. After the op I was thirsty and drank a glass of water because NOBODY TOLD ME THAT IF YOU HAD ANESTHETICS YOU CAN'T PEE. So I got it because I was in pain because I couldn't pee (you can't release muscles you don't feel), something they could've told me when giving me something to drink. Totally unnecessary. On the plus side, the anesthetics made me not feel anything.

@Slaykomimi wow that is elaborate. I don't have your survival skills. I think I would starve to death without frozen food.

@JMack Fun fact: When I was a senior in high school I went to night school to become an EMT (Emergency Medical Tech). At one point we do clinicals in an ER shadowing an ER tech. So my very first night in an ER we had a guy come in with a blood clot that got lodged in his urethra and hadn't been able to pee for ages. They just gave it to the techs to handle.

Spoiler for Hiden:

So the tech I was shadowing kept grabbing larger and larger catheters, jabbing it into this dude's penis basically caving the whole thing in while he was in agony until he broke up the clot. I was trying so hard to keep a straight face and not to turn green. It was...um... not easy to watch.

Anyways when I worked in hospitals during summers at college I was one of the few males so that made me very popular with the elderly ladies who suddenly couldn't reach their breasts during bath time and also anytime a dude needed a catheter. Apparently I was very good at it, and much gentler than the female nurses/clinical associates.

This past week for the first time I was treated to the adventure that is a colonoscopy. Good fricking times, that.

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The Gem Cutter"Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There's always the possibility of a fiasco. But there's also the possibility of bliss." - Joseph Campbell

Just under a month until my next book goes to the editor, and a lovely cloud of winter depression has settled upon my mind. I find editing to be mentally exhausting (fun, but tiring) and, of course, depression compounds that. Worse when the people who should be supportive aren't even around.

What does everyone else do when they find themselves in these situations - especially with deadlines!? I was extremely lucky over the past three days to review/edit 10k words, but I was alone the entire time and could break up the work with housework. Not exactly sustainable!

At least I have a few years until the doctor recommends a colonoscopy!!